My ghost story won’t be scary, I can’t scare people, reveals Karan Johar

As we know, after Bombay Talkies (2013) and Lust Stories (2018), Karan Johar is now all set to make another short film as part of an anthology which will also be directed by Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banerjee. 

During his interaction at the recently concluded 10th Jagran Film Festival in Mumbai, Johar shared that making a horror film will be a huge challenge for him since he is not comfortable at all watching a film of this genre. 

"I can’t watch a single horror film in my life," said the filmmaker. "I find the horror shows that come on TV scary. I hate those jump scare moments. I am producing [another] one that’s releasing next year, Bhoot. They want me to see the final cut next month and I am like, I will have to wear a hoodie and look beyond it because I am petrified."

As Johar himself gets scared by horror films, he has decided to take a different approach for his story in Ghost Stories. “The first thing I told them was that my ghost story will not be scary. It will probably be a ghost story. I will try to just do that because I don’t think I can scare people. I mean, I can scare some people who see some of my movies, but not in the way we imagined,” he said. 

The head of Dharma Productions also shared that it was an ordeal for him to find a story for his film. He finally found a story through an agency written by a writer who lives abroad. "It’s written by a writer called Avinash Sampath. Can you believe? I have never met or spoken to him till now. He lives in Amsterdam. He writes from there. I read about 50 ghost stories [while searching one]. At a point, I was really finding it very tough to sleep in my own room," he said. 

Johar plans to call up the writer before the start of the shoot. "I am planning to call him the day I shoot and say ‘Listen, I am shooting your story and I hope I don’t mess it up,'"he added.